Dream Weaver
by luvscharlie
Summary: Ginny Weasley has grown up to marry her childhood crush, but it isn't her husband who haunts her dreams. It's a first love that drags her into darkness when he comes to visit her nightly dreams. Tom/Ginny, Harry/Ginny


_Dream Weaver _by Luvscharlie

_Warnings: __Angst, unrequited feelings._

_A/N: Originally written for the 2011 Winter Fic Exchange at the rairpair_shorts community on Live Journal where fiery_flamingo requested canon compliance (as much as possible), drama, angst, unhappy endings, and the prompt was the lyrics below. Thank you aigooism for the beta work._

_

* * *

_

You're not a man  
You're just a boy  
Who likes to mangle up his toys  
You bring to me your broken dreams  
Your wishes to reality  
Your freedom is from stabbing me  
I won't endure these heartless deeds  
You only choose to taunt and play  
With what you won't face anyway

-Voodoo Games by Darling Daughter

* * *

I never imagined that all these many years later it would still affect me so. I'm a married woman now. Envied by so many for my marriage to the Boy Who Lived. I have borne him children. I have grown up and I am strong and secure in the person who I've grown to be. Proud even of my status as a happily married, but independent woman. It's how the world sees me anyway, judging by the numerous articles that the _Daily Prophet_ prints about their favourite topic—Me. Wife of the Boy Hero.

I should be happy. _Should_ being the operative word. I have so much. And still, despite all of it, He comes to visit me in my dreams.

I don't think Harry could ever understand how easily it is to be taken in by a man as charming as Tom Riddle. Harry's harsh sometimes to those who followed Him, the man who comes to visit me in nightly slumber, in his pureblood mania. Not me. I know firsthand just how truly charming You-Know-Who could be. And of all the people in the world, I should hate him. He killed my brother after all. Not directly by his hand, but Lord Voldemort was responsible for it all.

But maybe that's where the lines go all fuzzy in my head. I can't seem to combine that monster who was Lord Voldemort with the boy who charmed my eleven year old heart from the pages of a diary that I clung to when I felt most lost and alone in the world—the last child in a new school that had come to know each of my brothers first and wasn't always kind. And it's _that_ boy who simply will not be excised from my heart or my dreams. First loves are not supposed to be this dark or this lingering. That's what I tell myself every night before I close my eyes and wrap my arms around the man I married… then dream of his greatest enemy.

He visits me. No matter how many Sleeping Potions I try or how exhausted I am, when I settle down to sleep, I see him there. He's handsome, that boy of my dreams. The locks of hair so black when they fall over his forehead in disarray, the smile that curves up a mouth made beautiful when he smiles. And I could love him again—this time as a grown woman, not the child that first came into contact with the boy that was Tom Riddle. I really think I could, if that smile ever reached his eyes. But it doesn't. There's an emptiness there that begs to be filled.

He draws me to him and tilts up my chin so that he's staring down into my face. His eyes are a lovely warm shade of brown and I find with deep regret that they will one day lose that beauty and turn the colour of red rage. A rage stamped down deep to fool his professors and those he needed to further his cause, until it couldn't be dampened any longer. And that's when I know that I am dreaming; that this boy who once might have travelled the same path as my husband, had only his choices been different—he exists no more. But it seems so real. In dreams I shouldn't be able to feel it when he touches me. But my skin rises in pimples of goose flesh as I am pulled into a kiss that I shouldn't want… yet seek out with a desperate desire.

His fingers dig into my skin and I find that I am saddened, that such lovely shaped hands would become so pale and ghastly, that a mind so brilliant had twisted with hate and a thirst for power absolute. And I wish that I could have changed it all for him… for the world. If I'd been born in another time, shown him an ounce of compassion, listened when he confided his deepest secrets, might it have made some difference? People have given up power for less, even those who held it as dearly as Tom Riddle once did.

"Ginny," he whispers, and his voice is just as I remember it. The same as when he spoke to me so long ago from pages crisp and yellowed with age. I loved him then. That boy who showed me kindness, who listened when I spilled out my heart's desires, who comforted a homesick child.

And even when he scared me, I was drawn to him. I think it's the fear that brings me back—that longing to feel something so intense that it scares me. I love my husband, but Harry has never evoked any emotion that strong in me, and there's a part of me that's desperate to feel something—anything that deeply again. At night, I am powerless to hold it at bay. So I go to him with willing abandon, desperate to have his hands ghost over my skin, to feel his lips connect with mine—just to _feel_ something… anything.

He whispers to me of things I could have, things which only he could provide to me, things which my husband has far too much heart to even consider. Things which I, myself, didn't realise I desired—and which I want with a bloodlust so strong that I fear I no longer know myself very well.

I've changed. I go towards evil with open arms, arch my back as its arms wrap round my waist, part my lips to greet it with the wet warmth of my tongue, and prepare to surrender my all to it… to him. The sound of my name in my ear rouses me as Harry gives my shoulder a firm shake. I dig my nails into that shimmery world of sleep and hear my husband yelp and swear when I grip more substance than my dream provides.

"That must have been some dream from the way you were moaning," Harry says, smiling down at me as I rub the sleep from the corners of my eyes. "I hope I was there. Sounds like something I'd hated to have missed. You left marks," Harry says, looking down at his forearm. "I like it when you leave marks."

I smile deceptively. "It was nothing," I say; _It was everything I'm ashamed of wanting,_ I think, and roll away to hide my eyes. I'm not good at deception, but Harry's eyes are filling with lust as he stares at my full breasts, and the last thing I want right now is to entertain my husband's base desires. "I'm tired," I say, blaming our new son for my exhaustion and putting some distance between us until I can fall back asleep, hoping that I'll find darkness there in my dreams.


End file.
